When we think of German literature, we often think of Goethe or Schiller, or perhaps Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. However, this is not the view of the German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani, the first second-generation immigrant to be admitted as a member of the prestigious Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. According to Kermani, the most emblematic figure of German culture is actually the Prague-born Jewish writer Franz Kafka, who, as evidenced by his diaries, had a rather tenuous connection with Germany and is notable for his pronounced, yet elusive, multiculturalism. Kafka himself struggled to describe his identity clearly. Thus, Kermani asks in his presentation, what can be considered specific to German literature? Might its true nature lie in its foreignness? In the end, Kermani arrives at a conclusion that appears paradoxical: the identity of German culture lies in its avoidance of a single, univocal representation of itself and its ability to include the other. The critique, rather than the defense, of a "German" essence constitutes the true Leitmotiv of the history of its literature.
